A Salvation Audit

In this volume, Colin Grant argues that the awkwardness of salvation for recent theology is a symptom and source of ambiguity about God. Erosion by secularization, displacement by alternative "religions" like consumerism, and the reality of other genuinely religious traditions all challenge the Christian gospel of salvation that forms the heart of the biblical proclamation, the central theme of historic theology, and the fundamental focus of the church's celebration and motivation. Promotion of the gospel of salvation as a means of addressing social and environmental concerns will further that submergence of the gospel except insofar as this arises out of the transformative power of the gospel's own theological vision. The gospel of salvation is first and foremost about God. Grant stresses that it is significant because it is true, not because it is personally useful.
The idea of salvation is foreign to contemporary life and an embarrassment in theology, but it is impossible to imagine the Bible, historical theology, or the church apart from this notion. Liberal or liberation attempts to isolate Jesus from the gospel of salvation defy the dominant thrust of the New Testament. The impoverishment of modern theology is due in no small measure to its loss of a significant sense of atonement. The irrelevance of the church reflects the loss of enthusiasm for the celebration of the gospel of salvation.
The gospel of salvation has been undermined by secularization and its religion substitutes as well as by the recognition of genuineness in other living religions. Secularity seems to dispense with religion but is itself finally a religious category.
The gospel of salvation will not be restored because it is promoted as a means of addressing social injustice or environmental devastation, but only insofar as its own intrinsic significance is recognized. Although the current promotion of social salvation identifies neglected dimensions of the gospel, on its own this direction could further submerge the gospel in the anthropocentric, technological horizon whereby God becomes another resource for people whose predicament so largely derives from a resource mentality. Reactions against privatistic distortions of the gospel must not be permitted to obscure the importance of personal appreciation and appropriation. The social thrust of the gospel and its personal impact depend upon the reality of the theological basis of salvation in the being and activity of God.
The significance of the Christian gospel of salvation is not primarily a matter of its usefulness, but of its truth. That truth is more a matter of otherness than other-worldliness, of directive than determinism, of destiny than finality.